Buy an Aussie Tomcar mini-ute and a cane toad hat

Either says Mad Max. Both just says crazy.

Most Read

You're Israeli. You have a war on with Egypt and a sack full of broken Willys MB jeeps. What are your options? Well, being Isreali, you could hammer a crude golem from the fenders and proceed on foot, or you could cobble together a pair of proto Mad Max desert vehicles and proceed across the Sinai towards Egypt. Which is more or less what happened in the Six Days War in 1967, when a commando unit had six Jeeps parachuted in, all of which apparently broke into pieces on impact.

The same mechanic who assembled the original version in 1967 later started building a new take on his ATV-like creation commercially about a decade later, and there's now a small segment of these super-ATVs thriving in the world's most inhostpitable places, like Australia, home of the Tomcar.

The Australian Tomcar stays true to its roots in that it's designed to survive being dropped out of a helicopter and is easily field repairable. There are three models, a base 1-liter TM-2 two seater; TM-4 four-seater with optional 1.4-liter diesel; and the TM-5 ute, which has a 1,400-pound payload and can tow 3,300 pounds. All models have four-wheel drive, a CVT, a flat undercarriage with 6061 aluminum skidplate and 15 inches of clearance front to rear. They're somewhere between a big ATV and a tube frame rock buggy, and entirely wonderful. There are even dealers in the USA, where prices start at $20,000, and I'm pretty sure we need to have a road test.

If you've got the postapocalyptic car, you need the postapocalypic hat. And as the Tomcar looks more than a little like a toad, you'll want a Jacaru Outback hat, made from 18 cane toad hides and decorated with a croc skin band and seven croc teeth. It tells the world you're not afraid to wear hallucinogenic amphibian skins in direct contact with your skin, and you don't care who knows it. I'm not even sure if it's legal in the US, but if you're the sort of person who drives a Tomcar, you won't let a little thing like customs stop you.